The Tour de Beauce heated up in today's time trial, both figuratively and literally, with aggressive racing in the forecast for the final two stages. As the temperature inched up to a sunny and balmy 75 degrees Fahrenheit on stage 4, the fight for the overall victory went into overdrive with only three seconds separating the top three riders in the general classification, still led by Francisco Mancebo (5-hour Energy).

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Fastest on the day was Joey Rosskopf, who clocked a time of 26 minutes and 30 seconds on the 20km out and back course which featured the region's typical rollers. Less than a second slower was Nathan Brown (Bontrager) who claimed second while Ben Day (UnitedHealthcare) was third at one second.

"I was really hoping for a top 10, like other time trials that I've done this year. This is awesome, I didn't expect to win," said Rosskopf, who admitted that he was very surprised that he won. "It's all about metering out your effort, I guess. I haven't been that good at time trial until this year, I've just been getting better at them. Pacing is something that I've been trying to figure out how to do."

Brown, who finished third at US Pro time trial, remains in the red best young rider jersey. "I knew that my time trialing was good, I knew that I had good form and I'm happy," he said. "The legs were definitely heavy after yesterday's stage, but I got into a good rhythm and I knew when I was coming to the line that I had a pretty good time but just that much. But I'm still very happy with my ride."

Though he did not pre-ride the course, the 23-year-old Rosskopf did make an impromptu trip last night to check it out. "It's actually funny, we were sitting around, having a team meeting at 8:30 last night, just looking at the course, talking about what time we were about to leave and someone wanted to come see it, so we all ran out to the car, drove here to come drive the course as it was getting dark."

As for 21-year-old Brown, he simply followed the advice of his teammates who started before him. "They told me that the climb was long, just punch it over and then you have recovery on the downhill, that's what I did and it worked out perfect."

Veteran Day used his experience to tackle the rolling course. "The way I do a time trial is just to keep it as steady as I can and capitalize on the fact that I'm a little big bigger than some of these climbing guys, try to get a little more speed out of those areas. It's not so much racing other people on a day like today, it's just trying to do the best time that you can do. I felt that I put a good effort and it sounds like it's really, really close. It's going to be a very hotly contested Tour de Beauce."

Mancebo finished in sixth place, 27 seconds slower than the winner. Mancebo's time was enough, barely, to keep him in the yellow jersey with a lead of two seconds on Matthew Cooke (CRCA) and three seconds on Brown. Day moved up to fourth place overall, at 15 seconds down.

Two stages remain at the Tour de Beauce, two very difficult stages starting with the 12-lap circuit race in Quebec City on Saturday and concluding with the 10-lap circuit race in St Georges on Sunday. Jerseys have been lost previously on these two days.

"Very close," agreed Mancebo. The 2011 overall winner was confident with two stages to go. "It's better to be in the front than behind. I did my work today, I didn't lose too much time and now I can win. It will be hard because you can lose the race in a sprint in bonifications or something but we enjoyed the yellow jersey yesterday and today. Tomorrow will be another day."

Brown is taking the next two stages day-by-day. "We have Jasper [Stuyven] too for stage wins so we'll definitely be looking for stage wins and tomorrow is in Quebec City and Antoine [Duchesne] is from Quebec City so it would be awesome to get him a good result there."

Two-time (2007, 2010) overall winner Day knows the race very well. "These last two days are always full gas, two very painful days so I'm sure it's going to be aggressive as always and we'll just wait and see what happens."

Though his team has spent a lot of time at the front of the field, chasing back breaks, Day is confident in his teammates. "One of our strengths is our team, those guys are ready to back up day after day. They are more than capable in handling this race, I'm sure you'll see a few fireworks from us and a few other teams trying to slip into the moves in the next couple of days. Quebec City is a really hard circuit, super aggressive race, very fast and this last stage in St Georges is always very difficult."